Beverly Hills Cop: Axel F review – fish-out-of-water Eddie Murphy chases past glories

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Murphy’s maverick cop – and his theme music – are back to fight corruption, but four decades on there’s little energy to enliven their formulaic reunion Eddie Murphy isn’t finished yet – as he proved with his barnstormer of a performance as Blaxploitation pioneer Rudy Ray Moore in Dolemite Is My Name . But there’s something a bit tired and formulaic about this further go-around for his iconic Detroit cop Axel Foley from the Beverly Hills Cop action-comedy franchise which 40 years ago made Murphy an explosive Hollywood star – and whose catchy Axel F theme became an 80s anthem, duly revived here. He’s back for the fourth film, yet again leaving his Detroit turf to be a scruffy fish-out-of-water in the hilariously chi-chi world of Beverly Hills, yet again wryly noticing from the wheel of his car, on the way in, a montage of all the crazy California stuff, including a car registration plate reading: PRE-NUP. Axel’s grownup lawyer daughter Jane (Taylour Paige) is in Beverly Hills, menace
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Tell Me About It review – British Asian Gen Z drama bounces between crime and kitchen sink

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Two young women on a jaunt find themselves embroiled with drug gangsters in director Suman Hanif’s uneven feature

Here is a film set in the British-Pakistani community that focuses on two Gen Z girls on the cusp of adulthood: Halima (Nimrah S Zaman) and Amara (Ariya Larker). Halima is the daughter of an MP with plans to get tougher on drug-related crime, while Amara is just trying to get by despite a turbulent family life, with parents who seemingly can’t stand each other and a brother struggling to find his path in life and considering a job in a call centre. So far, so social-realist, but when Halima and Amara plan a weekend away, Amara gets kidnapped by accident by a goon working for a drug kingpin who, claiming “all brown girls look the same to me”, mistakes her for Halima.

The director, Suman Hanif, has said that Tell Me About It is aiming to hold a mirror up to represent the experiences of the British South Asian community; presumably this applies to the family dynamics and friendships more than the kidnap plot. It’s uneven stuff – the way that Hanif blends the contrasting elements of kitchen-sink realism, comedy and kidnap drama lands us somewhere in the same tonal zone of a TV programme like Hollyoaks.

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